Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust

Steve McCabe Excerpts

Wednesday 9th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

Of course, by definition, contractual rights cannot be retrospectively applied, but let me make it clear that I will be issuing guidance in terms that I have set out to the House in my statement today—albeit that we might need to do more. That guidance is entirely intended to move the NHS to an open culture that encourages staff to raise concerns. As I said to the Patients Association yesterday, we must have a culture of challenge inside the NHS under which the offence is not to make a mistake, as mistakes are human, but to seek to cover up or ignore a mistake. That is what happens in the best organisations and it must be what happens throughout the NHS.

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

I welcome the Secretary of State’s promise of early action. Will he tell us how many members of the present board were in post on 18 March 2009 and when he will sack them as he has promised?

[Mr Lansley]

The hon. Gentleman will forgive me: I know that the chief executive, the chair, the nursing director and others have moved on, but I do not know the precise answer and I will write to him about that. In relation to any individuals, I think it is proper that, having asked Robert Francis to conduct a further inquiry that takes account of all that he discovered in the first report and that covers the same period of time—2005 to 2009—he is free to make recommendations that will bear upon people working inside the trust and in organisations, and upon how they discharge those responsibilities.